[11] At Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ direction, hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinstein recruited Tony Fadell, a former employee of General Magic and Philips, who had a business idea to invent a better MP3 player and build a complementary music sales store.

[11] Fadell partnered with a company called PortalPlayer to design software for the device; this work eventually took shape as the iPod OS.

[10] The original iPod's physical appearance was inspired by the 1958 Braun T3 transistor radio designed by Dieter Rams, while the wheel-based user interface drew on Bang & Olufsen's BeoCom 6000 telephone.

[19] Apple contracted another company, Pixo,[14] to help design and implement the user interface (as well as Unicode, memory management, and event processing[14]) under Jobs' direct supervision.

[10] The name iPod was proposed by Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter, who (with others) was contracted by Apple to determine how to introduce the new player to the public.

[20] Chieco's proposal drew an analogy between the relationship of the spaceship to the smaller independent pods and that of a personal computer to its companion music player.

Color display iPods then adopted some Mac OS X themes like Aqua progress bars, and brushed metal meant to evoke a combination lock.

Belgian website Belgium iPhone originally found the images after plugging in an iPod for the first time, and subsequent photos were discovered by Pierre Dandumont before being leaked.

[39][40] The combination of the undersized DC-blocking capacitors and the typical low impedance of most consumer headphones form a high-pass filter, which attenuates the low-frequency bass output.

The second-, third-, and fourth-generation iPod Shuffle uses a single 3.5 mm minijack phone connector which acts as both a headphone jack or a USB data and charging port for the dock/cable.

Some accessories added extra features that other music players have, such as sound recorders, FM radio tuners, wired remote controls, and composite video cables for TV connections.

Apple announced in 2005 that similar systems would be available for other vehicle brands, including Mercedes-Benz,[53] Volvo,[54] Nissan, Toyota,[55] Alfa Romeo, Ferrari,[56] Acura, Audi, Honda,[57] Renault, Infiniti[58] and Volkswagen.

Some independent stereo manufacturers including JVC, Pioneer, Kenwood, Alpine, Sony, and Harman Kardon also had iPod-specific integration solutions.

[60] Beginning in mid-2007, four major airlines, United, Continental, Delta, and Emirates, reached agreements to install iPod seat connections.

The free service allowed passengers to power and charge an iPod, and view video and music libraries on individual seat-back displays.

[61] Originally KLM and Air France were reported to be part of the deal with Apple, but they later released statements explaining that they were only contemplating the possibility of incorporating such systems.

[62] The iPod line can play several audio file formats including MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless.

[63] The iPod Photo introduced the ability to display JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and PNG image file formats.

[67] Alternative open-source audio formats, such as Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, are not supported without installing custom firmware onto an iPod (e.g., Rockbox).

[72] At the time the store was introduced, purchased audio files used the AAC format with added encryption, based on the FairPlay DRM system.

Those games were: Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini Golf, Pac-Man, Tetris, Texas Hold 'Em, Vortex, Asphalt 4: Elite Racing and Zuma.

[101][failed verification] On April 9, 2007, it was announced that Apple had sold its one-hundred millionth iPod, making it the best-selling digital music player of all time.

[105] At the September 9, 2009 keynote presentation at the Apple Event, Phil Schiller announced total cumulative sales of iPods exceeded 220 million.

[115] Some of the iPod's chief competitors during its pinnacle include Creative's Zen, SanDisk's Sansa, Sony's Walkman, iriver, and Samsung's Yepp.

[122] Samsung declared that they would take the top spot from Apple by 2007,[123] while SanDisk ran a specific anti-iPod marketing campaign called iDon't.

[124][125] These competitors failed to make major dents, and Apple remained dominant in the fast-growing digital audio player market during the decade.

Apple announced a battery replacement program on November 14, 2003, a week before[137] a high publicity stunt and website by the Neistat Brothers.

[148][149] On June 11, 2006, the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday reported that iPods are mainly manufactured by workers who earn no more than US$50 per month and work 15-hour shifts.

Apple hired a workplace standards auditing company, Verité, and joined the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct Implementation Group to oversee the measures.

Further, the salaries attributed to this product were overwhelmingly distributed to highly skilled U.S. professionals, as opposed to lower-skilled U.S. retail employees or overseas manufacturing labor.